


Symbiotic Relationship

by Razek



Category: Titanfall
Genre: Bullshit Science, Forgive Me, Im bad at writing, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-28 20:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8461168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razek/pseuds/Razek
Summary: When Cooper starts having headaches after returning from Typhon, he doesn't think it's anything more than stress. But his recurring dream is trying to tell him otherwise.(This will be BT/Cooper eventually but yknow. Setup n shit. It'll also contain sexual material eventually, so the rating will go up.)





	1. Public Speaking

_Jack winced as he forced the Titan chassis to move, the auto-navigation systems completely fucked. As he did so his mind and heart were racing at a thousand miles an hour. He didn’t know what BT was planning, but he trusted him._

_As the Titan, with him still inside, was loaded into the injector assembly, BT explained it. They were going to be launched in to the core. If that was the only way to stop the Fold Weapon, then Jack was ready. “I’m not going anywhere, BT.” He said, half to reassure the mech, half to reassure himself._

_As they were launched out of the injector, Jack closed his eyes and took his final breath. “Protocol 3: Protect the Pilot.” BT’s voice came as a surprise, and then he was being yanked out of his seat by a giant hand._

_“BT, what are you doing!?” No, he wasn’t going to let this happen. It was together, or not at all.  
“Trust me.” The mech’s response made his heart sink, or maybe that was just the throw that followed right after._

_“BT!” Jack called out as he watched ~~his Titan~~ his friend sacrifice himself.  
_

With a start, Jack woke up. He was greeted by pure darkness. He could tell he was in his bunk, because the mattress beneath him was solid and his sheets were paper thin. He missed his home on Harmony. He missed his sheets that he’d bundle up in.

The second thing he noticed was that he had another pounding headache. It felt like his neck had been snapped, his head was going to split, and his eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets.

“Lights on.” He called out as he sat up and over the edge of the bed. The room was illuminated and he immediately regretted his decision. The light made it so much worse. “Dim lights.” He called out again, and the lights dimmed.

He rubbed his eyes as he sighed, standing up and looking for the door to his bathroom. He shuffled over, the cold metal floor on his feet making him even more uncomfortable. He decided against turning on the lights this time, instead letting the light from his room bleed in as he opened the cabinet from which the mirror rested. He reached for a pack of pills and downed four of them, washing them down with some water from the sink before trudging back to his uncomfortable bed.

He’d been getting these headaches for the last few weeks, ever since the incident on Typhon. At first he’d pegged it as stress, and everybody agreed. But since then they hadn’t stopped, or let up. Every night it was the same. He’d dream about BT sacrificing himself, then wake up with crippling headaches.

The first night it had happened he’d barely been able to get out of bed, let alone make it to the bathroom. Since then he’d seen the doctor onboard the new ship he was serving on, the McCarren. He’d been prescribed some heavy-duty painkillers and some rest. He’d been happy to take the painkillers, but less than thrilled about the rest.

Briggs had told him that he’d be speaking at the ceremony they were holding for the battle of Harmony. He’d become known as the hero, the sole savior. But… that didn’t feel right. It was more than just him. It was the countless riflemen and pilots who’d given their lives on the final assault on Typhon. And it was also BT. 

Damnit, that stupid fucking robot. He’d barely known him for more than a few days while they were linked, and it was stupid to get so attached so quickly. But Jack felt like he’d be committing a crime or something if he didn’t mention BT in his speech.

As he sat on the bed his eyes drifted to the clock built in to the wall. 4:50am shipboard time. He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. Another 5 hours until the ceremony, and then after that Briggs had slotted him for his new Titan and he to link for the first time.

_Great._

Jack was on the main hangar deck by 9:30, where most the heavy machinery had been moved to clear space for a platform and some chairs. Typically, ceremonies like this were held on Harmony, the Militia’s so called ‘Headquarters.’ But the McCarren had been moving from system to system to try and hold back IMC forces since the Fold Weapon was destroyed. The IMC had not been happy about that. 

In his hands, he held a datapad where he’d written out his speech. Every time he read the words back to himself they made him cringe. He’d never been a good writer, and he didn’t feel like he could ever do the soldiers that gave their lives any sort of justice.

As time rolled on, the ceremony started, and the pit in Jack’s stomach got deeper and deeper. God, he hated public speaking. Why did he agree to do this? Maybe he could sneak out now whilst nobody was looking. 

Briggs started out by calling up different soldiers and awarding them medals. This included Jack. As he walked up the platform he took a few deep breaths and steeled himself. He’d taken on basically an entire army with only BT by his side. He could fucking handle this.

As Briggs went on, speaking about how everybody played their part in saving Harmony, Jack was going over the key points in his speech, hoping to god that he didn’t mess it up. Then the dreaded moment came. Briggs called out his name as she looked over her shoulder directly at him. He stood up as straight as he could and then stepped forwards towards the cheering crowd.

He cleared his throat and placed his datapad on the podium before speaking. “Thank you all.” He took a deep breath and looked over the crowd that was waiting expectantly. As he did, he noted that his headache was coming back in full force. He needed to make this quick, then. 

“First, I’d like to thank all of the people who I personally fought alongside with, starting with Captain Tai Lastimosa. As many of you know, Captain Lastimosa was killed in action at the start of all of this. I watched it happen right in front of me. Tai was a good man, and an even better soldier. He had taken me under his wing, and was training me to become a pilot. He saved countless lives on countless worlds, and did so much to help fight the IMC. I’m honored that I get to walk in his path and continue fighting against the IMC in his name.”

He took a deep breath in and had to hold on to the podium to stop his hands shaking. “Next comes BT-7274. I’m aware many of you will think it’s odd to speak about a Titan at a ceremony like this. But I feel that he deserves mentioning. BT-7274 was originally Captain Lastimosa’s Titan, and when he died, BT was transferred to me. It was so sudden, I had no idea what to do. Luckily, BT had my back. As soon as we linked, we were completely in sync. He saved my life on more than one occasion, and... he also sacrificed himself. It’s hard to put in to words how close we got without sounding ridiculous or fictitious, I guess you just had to be there.”

He laughed to himself, mainly to try and cover up how much his head fucking hurt now. “Next I’d like to thank..” He closed his eyes as his head throbbed again and he suddenly got tunnel vision. He felt something running down his nose and reached up to feel. When he pulled his hand away his finger had blood on it.   
The last thing he thought before he hit the ground was ‘Oh, Shit.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i spent 30 minutes researching fMRI scans on google images so obviously I am now an expert. this is a fanfiction it's not meant to be scientifically accurate pls dont shoot me, the tags warned you of bullshit science. also i know i said this'd be up on the 5th but i felt like shit after work. here it is, longer than organically planned! I actually split it in to two chapters since I felt that it'd be easier to take in the information if it was divided. chapter four will come soon too!

_  
“I’m not going anywhere, BT.”_

_“Protocol 3. Trust me.”_

_“BT!”  
_  
His eyes snapped open and once again that throbbing pain returned. The bright lights blaring in his face didn’t help either. As his eyes adjusted to being open and the blurriness subsided, Jack realized that he was in the medical ward of the McCarren.

It wasn’t the appearance of it, in fact aside from the medical beds and machinery scattered around, it looked like any other part of the ship with its dull grey metal walls. The giveaway was the smell. That lingering smell of antiseptic that made things smell just a little bit too clean. It was also hell on his sinuses, for some reason.

Slowly he tried to sit up, shuffling in the bed as he made mental notes of his new situation. Right. Ok. So.. he’d collapsed, probably. He remembered going to the podium and looking out on the crowd, and then… nothing.

‘Oh _god_ ’ He thought. ‘Did I fucking faint at public speaking? What am I, 15?’ His head stung as he thought. That wasn’t fun. Thinking actively hurt him. He raised his hand to his temple and rubbed it slowly whilst looking around the bed for the assistance button. He found said button and hit it, the little light above it coming on to indicate someone was on their way.

As he waited, he looked to the table to his right and saw a glass of water, with those air bubbles that form after water sits for a while. He reached out and grabbed the glass, chugging the entire pint in a few seconds. God, that was the best fucking water he’d ever drank.

Moments later the door opened and one of the doctors walked in. “Cooper, glad to finally see you awake. I was getting worried.” The man was tall, thin and had a rough stubble around his jawline. He had dark skin and spoke with a slight middle eastern accent. Jack knew his name… it was... uhh… it was… fuck. The more he tried to remember the more his brain throbbed. Moments later though, it clicked.

“Doctor... Samil, right? Thanks. What happened to me? Why am I in the med bay?” As he spoke he realised how dry his throat was. Even after drinking that whole glass. “Ugh... crap... and how long was I even out for?”

“That’s correct, yes.” He replied as he pulled a chair up to Cooper’s bed, sitting down and looking the man in the eyes. “It’s been about 12 hours now since you collapsed. As for what happened, we believe that you had a seizure of some kind. You were delivering your speech on the flight deck when your brain started to haemorrhage.”

At the mention of a seizure, Jack sat up a little more, suddenly feeling incredibly anxious. “What? A _seizure?_ Why?”

Samil sat back in his chair a little bit and rubbed the side of his face as he thought about his response. “We... aren’t exactly sure, but whilst you were unconscious we did several scans, including an fMRI. It showed us that not only was your brain haemorrhaging, but that your brain activity was much higher than was expected. Typically, during REM sleep, the brain’s activity is higher than when conscious, since the brain is working hard to store memories as neural pathways. This is what dreaming is. However, your brain was showing activity far higher than anything I’ve ever seen.” He took a breath and looked down at his notes for a moment. “It says here that you have not yet undergone your neural link wipe, from your previous Titan?”

All Jack could do as the doctor talked was stare as his throbbing head tried to make sense of all this new information. When the question was asked, he snapped out of his semi-daydream to shake his head. “No... not yet. Briggs wanted me to take some time to rest first, she figured doing the wipe with these headaches would be a bad idea.”

Samil nodded as Jack spoke. “Yes, yes. And normally I would agree with Commander Briggs, however, I fear that waiting so long for your link to be wiped may be what is causing these headaches, and may also be responsible for your increased brain activity.”

Jack set his head back on the pillow and sighed as he looked up at the grey ceiling. He didn’t want to wipe BT’s link. He had this feeling deep inside of him that the Titan had survived somehow, but.. it had been two weeks, and the explosion that destroyed him also destroyed an entire fucking planet. There was no way he could have survived. So… it was probably time to let go.

He lifted his head up again and looked to the doctor, nodding. “Yeah, guess you’re right. When can we do it?”

Samil looked over his datapad, switching to his scheduler. “Hm, looks like the Link is being used right now. Next opening is early this evening, 5:30. In the mean time I’ll book you in for a neural link scan, get a good idea of how much BT’s link is left in your head.”

“We only have one Link? Isn’t that inconvenient?” Jack laughed as he sat up again, reaching for his glass of water before realizing it was empty. Samil was already on his feet and taking the glass before Jack could ask. For a moment as he looked up at the doctor, he thought about how cute the man looked, but very quickly brushed the thought aside.

“We’re a paramilitary operating out of a handful of planets on the fringe, we’re lucky enough to have one as it is. I’ll be back with some water and then we’ll get you prepped for your scan.” He spoke whilst walking, heading out of the room. _Don’t look at his ass, Jack, don’t do it. Don’t._  
He did it.  
 __  
Fuck, that’s a cute butt.  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up that there's semi-detailed cranial surgery in this chapter, with mentions of bone saws and needles. if you dont like that, use ctrl+F to find "Let's see what we've got." to skip it!

A few hours later, Jack was lying in a rather _uncomfortable_ chair, wearing that shitty medical robe that presented his ass to the world. His wrists were strapped in and secured, always a reassuring sign that the procedure is safe. Still, they were scanning his brain with some seriously advanced tech, he could understand the precautions, especially given his recent proclivities towards seizures and brain bleeding.

One of the Link technicians was sliding him in to some sort of high density resonance imager thingy. Damnit, he didn’t know what the thing was called, he was a pilot not a doctor! Still, the thing _resembled_ an MRI machine, probably acted similar too. Differences were that only his head was being placed inside, and that there were metal electrodes directly touching his skin.

There was a loud whirring noise as the scanner spun up, powering it’s large whatchawhoosits and thingymabobs inside. Okay, so he wasn’t as stupid as that, he knew how MRIs worked, giant fuckin’ magnets. But this thing was based on Link tech, and he had NO clue how that shit worked.

He was still uncertain about getting BT’s link removed later, but… yeah… he was gone. Damnit, he was just a stupid robot, he shouldn’t be this attached. His thoughts were very suddenly interrupted as the technician called out.

“Done, let’s get you out of there.” 

She was a bit younger than Samil. Okay she was a lot younger than Samil. If she was diagnosing him instead of scanning him he’d question the validity of her doctorate. But still, it wasn’t all that bad. She was pretty cute too. Blonde hair, short, kinda masculine face. Yeah, cute.

He was checking out a lot of people today, wasn’t he?

As he was rolled out from the machine and sat up, the machine itself whirred down to a silent stop. He hadn’t even realized the headache that the high-pitched noise was giving him. The tech handed him a cup of water and then headed back to the terminal, where she glanced over the data readouts.

After a moment’s hesitation, she blinked, furrowed her brow, and read it over again. And then again. After a few more readthroughs Jack was starting to worry.  
“Sorry, I’m... having some trouble reading the data, I’ll be right back, I’m gonna grab Samil.” With that she hastily left the room.

Now that was worrying.

He shook his leg up and down, feeling anxious and antsy. He didn’t do well with waiting, he was more of an act now kind of guy, always moving. So, that five-minute wait whilst the tech went to grab Samil felt more like 15 minutes. It didn’t help that his butt was exposed to the metal of the chair, and jesus it was freezing his asscheeks off.

Finally, the two returned, with the tech still looking confused or worried or... something along those lines. Samil was looking a little bit more annoyed, probably thinking that the tech was just reading the data wrong or something, but a few seconds after his eyes ran over the terminal he had the same damn expression that the tech had.

And then Samil looked over at Jack and they locked eyes, and suddenly he realized. _Oh shit, something is really wrong._

“What is it? What’s wrong?” His voice was full of worry now, did he have a tumor or something? What the hell?

Samil stammered for a few seconds before adjusting his glasses, taking one last look at the terminal and then locking eyes with Jack again. “Jack... There is an enormous amount of Titan datacore code being stored in your brain. In fact, so much is being stored that your brain is bleeding.” He looked to the tech, eyes suddenly very serious instead of worried. “We need to get him in the Link. Now. Tell them that it’s a medical emergency, I’ll get Jack ready to be moved.”

While the tech ran off, Jack just sat in the chair, not really sure how to process the information he’d just been given. “We.. We can delete it, right?” He spoke as Samil helped him up and in to the wheelchair. 

“Yes, yes. We can delete it, it’s just.. it’s a lot of information, we need to know _what_ we’re deleting first.” He grabbed Jack’s wheelchair by the handles and pushed him to the elevator, from there they headed to the prep deck, where they kept all the Titan manufacturing equipment and more importantly, the Link chair.

The Link chair was IMC tech, obviously. They had neither the resources nor the funding to build something as advanced as the chair. From what Jack understood, it basically acted as a neural-link between titan and pilot, but instead of an AI being able to read and write to the user’s mind, other people could. It was mostly used for wiping links of old Titans, or in some cases making new ones. Jack figured they could use it to read whatever the hell had been dumped in his brain.

Samil basically ran with Jack once they got out of the elevator. Obviously, Jack just rolled with it. They quickly got Jack moved from the wheelchair in to the Link chair as soon as they got there.

Jack didn’t say much of anything really, he just let them do their thing. He just wanted the damn headache to stop.

As they hooked him in to the chair he saw the tech from the scan earlier and he finally saw her nametag. Cassie. Nice name. Cute name. _Damnit Jack now is not the time to be checking people out._ However as the team was helping him get strapped in, Samil spoke up.

“Jack, we’re going to give you some general anesthesia. It’s nothing too strong, but the chair does have to pierce your skull to access your amygdalae. And while there are no nerve endings in the brain for you to feel pain with, you could have another seizure if you tense or move too much.”

He was looking to Jack for some sort of approval. Jack responded with a curt nod before closing his eyes as the large metal band was placed on his forehead and secured tightly. A moment later he felt a small pinprick on the back of his hand and then a few sounds of metal clunking. A sharp pinch later followed by a soft whirring of a drill and suddenly his pounding headache worsened. He’d gotten used to the pain though, so he didn’t react.

A few seconds later and he heard Samil speaking. “Just a few more centimeters and we’ll be in. How’re you feeling, Jack?”

Jack didn’t really want to move his jaw to talk, or to nod. But he gave a thumbs up and spoke quickly. “I’m good. Just… make this quick yeah? I’m not thrilled on the idea of having something inside my brain.”

Samil laughed a little and nodded as he focused his attention on the terminal. On said terminal was a blank screen. For a few seconds, at least. Then the tool arm of the chair stopped moving and the screen lit up.

“And we’re in. Let’s see what we’ve got.” He tried reading over the code, furrowing his brow and ushering over two other technicians of the Link to read the screen. They all had the same perplexed look.

“Jack, it looks like whatever is in your brain is a program. Give me a second, I’m going to try to run it.” Samil tapped a few keys and then started to run the program. Quickly after, the screen went blank and Samil lifted his hands up as if to say ‘ I didn’t do it.’ Then the screen came back on, and everybody who was watching the terminal looked up at each other, confused as all hell by what was on the screen.

“What? What is it? What’s the program do?” Jack asked, suddenly feeling weirded out by the fact that A) they were running a computer program off his brain and B) He wasn’t being told what said program did.

“Uh well… See for yourself.” Samil said as he pulled up a second display and started mirroring what was on the first display so that Jack could see.

The screen was blank except that in the middle, in big bold letters were the words _‘Jack. Trust me.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wew, 2 chapters in a day. this was genuinely fun to write, and basically rolled off of my fingers to the keyboard. planning stories out in advance and splitting them in to consise plotpoints REALLY helps with writer's block!!


End file.
